“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Dana said.
Commander March’s chest rose and fell. “Yes.”
“Was it Grey?”
“No.”
“Then who killed her?”
“You are hardly in a position to be asking questions.”
“I deserve to know.”
“As a prisoner of war you deserve nothing.”
“So off with the gloves, March.” Dana pulled herself over to the edge of her bed. “Hit me. Torture me. Get the information you so desperately need.”
But the woman Dana had once trusted and worked alongside for the Yien cause stood over her saying nothing, probing Dana with those green eyes like she could see the truth if she looked hard enough. March always had been able to read her like a transcript.
Dana grabbed Commander March’s arm and squeezed as hard as she could through the graphene armor in her sleeve. She hated that her fingers shook. “That’s what you want, right? To make me suffer for what I did.”
March slowly wrapped her hand around Dana’s, her firm grip stilling the tremor. “What happened? What did they promise you to make you betray us?”
She clenched her teeth, determined not to answer. “I know you, March. You can’t stand to fail, and as long as I’m alive I’ll be a reminder that you failed to convert me.”
“You aren’t lost yet.”
“I’m your prisoner.”
“Men and women died rescuing you from Mazdaar, and you threw that away as if it is nothing. I cannot allow that any more than I want to see you suffer.”
She let go of the woman’s arm and fell back onto her pillow, depleted of strength.
Commander March frowned. “How do I know you aren’t helping Mazdaar even now, here in this bed?”
“You don’t.”
Dana stared up at the ceiling. She’d been eighteen when she defected from Mazdaar, and Dana thought she’d finally found her purpose helping others escape the prison of Mazdaar’s brainwashing. But a year ago during a role playing VR game she enjoyed in her spare time, she found herself playing against an opponent who went by the screen name RedStar. They began messaging, and over the next several weeks RedStar gradually sowed seeds of unrest in her. Without ever meeting face to face, RedStar became her confidant, her friend, and Dana began to regret defecting. RedStar make it all so clear that Mazdaar was the answer to the world’s problems. Too ashamed to bring her doubts to Commander March, Dana instead began to dream of reconciling with her mother.
Things didn’t exactly go as planned.
“I’m not telling you anything,” Dana said.
“Don’t be foolish.”
She hit the bed rail. “Who are you to tell me what’s right and wrong!”
“Someone who still cares about you.”
“All you’ve ever really cared about is being in power.”
Commander March sighed and shook her head. “They really did get to you, didn’t they?”
“I was suffocating under your rules and morals.”
“Then why did you save Grey?”
Dana glanced away.
“Want to know what I think?” Commander March didn’t wait for her to answer. “Somewhere inside you still know the difference between darkness and light.”
She felt herself weakening in this woman’s presence, and Dana fought against it. She didn’t know why she had thrown herself in front of Grey and taken a laser beam for her. If she hadn’t, she would still have the use of her legs.
“What are you going to do with me?”
March paused, touching her ear where she was probably wearing a removable auris implant. She stared straight ahead, listening.
“Copy that,” Commander March said and snapped her fingers.
The privacy curtain disintegrated.
“We’re moving you,” March said.
Dana struggled again to sit up. “Where?”
But Commander March was already gone.
Chapter 5
I’m not crazy,” Rin muttered under her breath as she dug through the small canvas bag holding all her personal belongings. When she had finished mucking manure she stayed outside to groom Tram and Trif, hoping her sister would forget the secret she’d stupidly revealed. The last thing she needed was Grey—or worse Mom and Dad—thinking she was losing it.
Rin pulled out the hand-carved cross necklace Grey had given her for her twelfth birthday. Its corners were worn smooth, and the once-pale wood was now the color of the coffee Grey enjoyed so much.
She held the necklace in her palm then slipped it over her head and tucked it under her tunic. It would ground her in reality. She didn’t understand what was going on, but she was not insane. Animals didn’t talk. She must have imagined it.
Rin slung her bag over her shoulder and was about to head to cosmoship Tevah, the vessel which had brought her to Jupiter and now waited at the edge of the clearing beyond the battleship. She heard a growling motor revving behind her and swung around as the ancient Jeep came to a sudden stop, a cloud of sparkling dust rising in its wake.
A pang of adrenaline radiated across her chest, but Rin relaxed at the sight of her father Tanner Alexander behind the wheel. He’d shaven off his beard and now looked like the man she remembered as a child.
He jumped out and grabbed her in a bear hug, lifting her off her feet. “How did my little girl get to be so big?”
Rin laughed as he set her down. If it was weird for her to discover Dad had been a brilliant scientist all these years, what must it be like for him to see his daughters nearly grown? She was just so glad he was alive.
“Why do we have to leave here?” she said.
He squeezed her again, so hard she could barely breathe. “It’s too dangerous, Rinny.”
“But I’m not a child anymore. I can fight.”
Tanner Alexander smiled down at her. “I pity the Mazdaar soldier who comes across you.”
“Dad, I’m serious.”
“Decision’s been made, kiddo.” He rubbed his chin and glanced at Tevah in the distance and the bustling soldiers in Yien black. Her father didn’t wear a uniform like Mom. Technically he was considered a civilian just like Rin, but everyone from Jet Yien to Commander March seemed to consider him as important as any officer.
“Does Mom being a captain ever bother you?”
Her father leaned up against the hood of the Jeep. With his sleeves rolled up, she could see his muscles flex as he crossed his arms.
“It used to.”
“Not now?”
“Hop in and we can talk.” Dad jumped into the Jeep’s passenger seat and waved her over. “You’re gonna have to learn to drive sometime.”
Rin couldn’t help the grin that came to her face. She threw her bag into the back and ran around to the driver’s door. She had never seen a combustion-engine auto in person until she got to Jupiter. Technology on Earth had progressed far beyond the gas guzzlers of yesteryear, but here on Jupiter she’d seen dozens of the archaic vehicles zipping around hauling everything from rifles to barrels of water.
She shut the door and stared at the wheel in front of her. You turned it to steer—she knew that—but Dad had to show her which button to push to start the engine.
“The pedal on the right is the accelerator,” he said. “It feeds fuel to the engine. The left is the brake.”
Rin started the engine and pushed the Go pedal, but the engine only revved.
“But first you have to release the hand brake.”
After a few jerky starts, she finally got the hang of it. Dad pointed her across the clearing.
“Head over there,” he said, gesturing toward one of the much smaller cargo vessels. The hanger ramp was already lowered. “Drive on up.”
“What?” Rin lifted her foot off the pedal.
“Take us up the ramp.”
“Are you sure?”
Her father nodded. “You can do it. Just give it some gas.”
She aimed the Jeep toward the cargo
ship and went for it. The vehicle shot up the ramp and inside. She slammed the left pedal with a screech to keep from driving into the wall. Dad caught himself on the dash.
“Sorry!”
“Good job,” he said. “We’ll tie it down and be all set.”
Rin got out and took in the interior. It wasn’t anything like the one that had brought her here to Jupiter. Tevah had been multiple stories tall with room for passengers and cargo. This one was all one deck and barely tall enough for the Jeep. There weren’t even any seats.
“Can this thing go interstellar?”
Dad produced a coil of rope that looked far too flimsy to hold down an auto, but he seemed confident as he wrapped the tires and attached the rope to slots in the metal floor.
“Nope,” he said. “We’re staying below three thousand meters. Hoping to stay off Mazdaar’s radar and make our getaway without them noticing. Tevah would be far too obvious, otherwise I’d insist we use it instead.”
That’s when she realized this would be the vessel to take her away from the battle she knew was coming. Maybe in a matter of hours. She scanned the interior again, relieved to see a few stalls already built in to transport livestock.
“Did I ever tell you how I met your mother?”
Rin tried to focus on her father. She probed her mind for the story, but it was a hazy memory from way back when she was little, before her parents disappeared.
“I was a few years older than you and already on Mazdaar’s watch list for asking too many questions.” Tanner Alexander knelt and tied off the back tire. “The credit Dot embedded in my hand had been blocked. Any purchase I made would’ve caused me to be detained, but I didn’t know it at the time. I went to buy a drink at the University café. But before I could order and pay, this beautiful girl stopped me and began talking as if we were old friends.”
Rin tried to picture her parents twenty years younger. Dad’s hair would’ve been sandy with no gray woven through it, and the wrinkles around Mom’s eyes would be gone too.
“She knew you were blocked?”
Dad moved to the other rear wheel with a smile. “What do you think? She was already working with Yien, though I didn’t know that at the time. So then she offers to buy my drink. Being nearly dead broke, I let her. She saved my skin that day.”
“Was it love at first sight?”
Her father chuckled. “I admit I was smitten, but your mother took a little convincing.”
Boots thudded on the metal gangplank, and a soldier arrived lugging an unlabeled crate. “Where do you want this?”
Tanner directed him to the front of the ship then returned to finish tying down the Jeep. Rin thought about his workshop in the silo and all the tools she couldn’t name. How had he kept his work on Tevah a secret for so long? As far back as she could remember, Tevah been hidden in their underground home.
Rin kept her eyes on her father’s broad back. “Why didn’t you tell us who you really were?”
“We would have eventually.”
“Didn’t you trust us?”
“Rinny.” Her father stood up and wiped his hands on his pants, leaving dark streaks in the fabric. “You were children. It would’ve only endangered you.”
“So instead Mazdaar tortured Grey for information she didn’t have.”
Tears pushed into her eyes, and she desperately fought them back. Her sister hadn’t said much, but Rin knew. They’d slept side-by-side for the past five years. Grey never had nightmares before Evangeline Yurkutz got hold of her.
Her father reached to hug her again, but Rin stepped away.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it’s not your fault.”
“You have a right to be angry,” Dad said.
“I just keep thinking that if we’d known where you and Mom were, things might’ve been different.”
“If you’d known, things could’ve been worse.”
“And now we’ve lost everything. There’s no home to go back to.”
Tanner Alexander took a step toward her. “What happened to Grey . . . I would’ve done anything to trade places with her.” He glanced away then focused on Rin again. “That is why it doesn’t bother me that your mother is a captain or that I had to go into hiding to be with her. Because there’s something a whole lot greater than ourselves worth fighting for.”
His words sparked in her. The Yien Dynasty had always advocated an individual’s right to freedom, in contrast to Mazdaar who stated that a truly advanced society could not be reached without people relinquishing individualism for the greater good. Mazdaar understood that when people were afraid they’d do just about anything to feel safe. In the aftermath of war, Mazdaar swooped in offering what the masses most craved—peace, food, shelter. Soon the lust for power corrupted too many within Mazdaar’s elite, and the Earth became its conquest.
The only thing that kept the Yien Dynasty from being wiped out on Earth was their grasp of Mazdaar’s technology. Stealthily over time, Yien built up the resistance her parents had joined. When Mazdaar made the move to conquer Jupiter, the Yien resistance knew they had to respond. If they could not win back Earth, they would claim Jupiter in the hope that it could become the twenty-second century’s haven for the persecuted. Here on Jupiter freedom could thrive. If they could hold it.
“Mazdaar cannot win,” she said.
“That’s why we’re here.”
“But we’re running away.”
Tanner checked the ropes on the Jeep one more time and gestured for her to follow him. “Obeying orders isn’t running away.”
“Dad, we’re civilians. We don’t have to obey anyone.”
Her father laughed. “Try telling that to Commander March.”
“I could talk to her.” Even though Grey was the one who’d done most of the bargaining with Mrs. March back home, she felt much closer to the commander after she’d brought her here on the flight from Earth.
Dad opened the cockpit door. Two rudimentary chairs for the pilot and co-pilot were positioned before a panel of controls. Her father rested his hand on the back of the seat. “You and I have a lot in common,” he said. “Your mom and Grey are the go-getters, the ones usually in the spotlight. But us? We sometimes fade into the background.”
She didn’t want to admit it, but he was right.
“That doesn’t mean we are any less important,” he said.
Rin stared out the viewing screen at the twisting yellow trees on the edge of the Jupiter clearing. “I know you are important.”
Dad reached out and brushed her cheek with the back of his hand. “We’re gonna have fifty frightened people on this ship with us. They’re going to need someone with a clear head and a compassionate heart to help them get through this.”
“Grey’s good at that.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Rinny.”
“I’m not good at anything.”
Her father gave her a stern look. “I may have been gone for five years, but it only took me one day to see how gifted you are with those animals.”
“Lot of good that’ll do in a war.”
“You’d be surprised.”
Rin wrapped her arms around her father. She rested her head on his chest and decided not to tell him anything more.
“Let me show you something.” Dad led her back down into the hold toward a row of lockers on one of the walls. He opened the nearest and yanked out a ratty backpack she recognized from his and Mom’s personal quarters. He dug for a moment and produced a leather knife sheath she remembered well. When she was little he didn’t go anywhere in the Preserve without it. She and Grey had searched for it after he left and assumed it had been lost with him.
He handed it to Rin. “I want you to have it.”
“Really?”
“You don’t have to be a soldier to protect yourself or those you love.”
She looked at the sheath in awe.
“I know you want to fight,” Dad said. “Just remember who the enemy really is.”
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“Mazdaar.” Rin spoke without hesitation.
Her father cocked his head. “The greater enemy is the darkness that would overtake your soul and wash away your compassion and love for mankind.”
She reverently took the sheath from him and pulled out the foot-long, gleaming knife she’d watched him sharpen more nights than she could count. The handle was wrapped in rawhide, and she could barely wrap her hand around it. In Rin’s fingers it felt more like a sword than a knife. She re-sheathed it and Dad helped her fasten it to her belt and strap it down on her thigh.
“Wow,” was all she could say.
Dad grinned down at her. “Your mother once told me that light shines in darkness and that darkness cannot overcome it.”
“Kinda obvious, Dad.”
“No, kiddo. Nothing’s obvious during war.”
Chapter 6
Grey hadn’t intended to eavesdrop on her mother from behind a container in the battleship’s hold, but she’d found the quiet spot to help clear her mind. All the commotion was making her as anxious as a caged tiger. She longed to feel a cool desert breeze brush across her face and to smell the sagebrush and pines of the Preserve.
Then Captain Sue Alexander and a dozen other soldiers including Lieutenant Marie Johansson and Corporal Lennox showed up. Grey had been too embarrassed to announce her presence after they began discussing military matters she knew weren’t meant for her ears, so she kept herself hidden in the shadows.
She peeked around the container. Mom had keyed up a holographic map like Mrs. March’s but half the size and dimmer. As far as Grey could figure, the civilians—most of whom were former Mazdaar prisoners—would be evacuated on two smaller cargo ships each lead by a Yien team of at least three soldiers. Hearing this surprised Grey. Which of these Yien soldiers would be accompanying them?
Grey stared down at the scars on her wrists. She’d traveled here to Jupiter with some of the civilians, but while they were lounging in recliners on the journey never dreaming they’d soon be prisoners, Evangeline Yurkutz was torturing her with shock cuffs.
“Here’s the rendezvous point,” she heard her mother say.
Jupiter Storm (Jupiter Winds series Book 2) Page 3